"They sat on his couch, facing one another.... Beside them, his
coffee table was a collage of shoe pictures, dozens of
dazzling high heels, and she recognized some of them as those
believed to belong to the murdered women.... 'It's the shoes that do it for him,
isn't it,' she said.

"'Yes,' he said without hesitation. 'At the root of this
guy's psychosis is a garden variety shoe fetish. Last time
we tried to get to him that way, chasing down leads in sex
shops, shoe stores, that sort of thing. Nothing panned out.... You wouldn't believe
how many people out there are into shoes, and I mean really
into shoes.'

"Scully picked up one photo, a close-up of a navy pump covered
in sequined flowers.... 'The shoe fetish is quite
common,' she said. 'The theory is that it's because our
brains are wired so that that sensory processing from the
feet is right next to the processing for the genitals. In
some people, the two regions may actually overlap.'

"'And the shopping region?' he asked. 'Do women have that one
right next to the shoe neurons, too?'"